The Problem With Black Magic (4 page)

BOOK: The Problem With Black Magic
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Khalil moved quickly, putting his body between Cassie and their assailants. The blond vampire swung his
long legs over the counter and drew towards them with a feline grace.

"I really wouldn't recommend that, man," he said, that disturbing canine smile from ear to ear. "You're low on the food chain-
- not your fault, just the way it is-- so don't try to be a hero and get hurt. We've got no interest in you. Well..." He paused to run his tongue over his fangs. "I am kind of hungry, but you don't smell so hot, so get out of the way."

Khalil paused for a moment before he moved out of the attacker’s way. Cassie felt a pang of betrayal for about a fraction of a second before she realized
that Khalil had done the right thing. He couldn't fight these men off, and they both knew it; why should anyone else have to get hurt?

"Get away from me, Jay," said Cassie. When he didn't respond, she pushed him to the side, so hard he fell on his butt.

"Cassie, don't-"

"I'll go with you, just don't hurt anybody else, okay? Or eat anybody," she said, looking up to meet the vampire's eyes.

She backed up until she was against the back counter; dammit, she wanted to go with them so they would leave everyone else alone, but she couldn't help herself from shrinking away from the man. It was a survival instinct, stronger than her rational mind.

The vampire towered over her and put a hand on top of her head. "Big of you," he said. "Of course, if I'm going to eat anybody tonight sweetie, it's
gonna be you, not them." With that, he opened his mouth wide, red-tinged saliva glistening on his extended teeth, and Cassie took a deep breath.

"Don't," came a warning from the man with the pendant. The blond one made a noise
of irritation and turned toward his partner.

"Why not?
He said to snatch her if we could, he never said we couldn't taste."

"Don't bother: I've heard that mage blood tastes terrible," said the shorter one
. "Magic makes it burn like rubbing alcohol all the way down. Save your stomach."

Despite her fear, Cassie felt her curiosity pique. If she was going to be kidnapped, at least she might have a chance of finding out what it was about her that had freaked Sam out. Apparently, whatever it was made her less tasty to vampire
s.

The blond vampire frowned and put a hand under her chin, appraising. "Are you sure? Wouldn't you think the blood of a familiar would be especially tasty? Forbidden fruit, and whatnot?"

The brown-haired one shrugged. "She can taste like nectar and ambrosia, it still wouldn't be good enough to be worth pissing off Nathan. Let's go."

"You're going, alright," said a voice to Cassie's side, and she drew a sharp breath when she realized it was Sam's. Apparently, he had come in through the alley entrance and through the break room. "Get away from her."

The blond vampire drew back as though she had stabbed him, and put his hands up, placating Sam. "Listen man, you were gone-- it wasn't poaching because you were gone."

"We were within our legal rights," said the shorter one, who Cassie noticed had also taken a few steps back.
It was strange, watching the vampires get defensive in Sam’s presence. Part of her wanted to cheer that the cavalry had come, while she couldn’t help but notice that her protector was the thing the other monsters were scared of. She shuddered with the thought that something about that was deeply wrong.

Sam stopped next to Cassie. She looked up at him, surprised to see his eyes were their normal brown color. She thought that facing down a pair of vampires would probably be a good time to pull out the glowing glare, but hey, if he could prevent her from being kidnapp
ed, she wasn't going to critique his presentation.

"That's true, you
were," he said, his tone calm and even. "Your master had every right to send you to claim an abandoned familiar. In court, I would have no right to kill both of you for still being here in ten seconds; there would definitely be some kind of fine. It might even be worse than an overdue library book.”

Cassie's jaw dropped as both men turned tail and ran-
- there was no better way to explain it. Quicker than she would have thought possible, they cleared the shop with superhuman grace, the blond one jumping over the counter in his haste. For about two seconds, they could all hear their leather boots hammering against the pavement, then silence.

Sam exhaled, looking tired. "Is everyone okay?"

"Dwight. They punched him," said Cassie, pointing.

"Where?" said Sam, walking towards the cafe. "Dammit, I didn't even see him because of the counter."

He knelt at Dwight's side, checking for signs of life. "It's okay," he said. "They just knocked him out. He'll wake up when he's ready."

Cassie took a relieved breath, noticing that the air smelled different since Sam had entered. There was some kind of dark, musty
scent to him that she had a feeling probably wasn’t cologne. It wasn’t unpleasant, but she couldn’t identify it.

Jay stepped forward, clearing his throat.
"Hey, Sam? Were those guys really...." he trailed off.

Sam stood up, looking at Jay.
"Vampires? Pathetic bottom-feeders, more like it. But yes."

Khalil coughed. "Look Sam...
don't take this the wrong way, since I'm glad you came back and got rid of those...yeah. But uh, what the hell are you?"

Sam scratched the back of his head, like the question embarrassed him. "Well.
About that."

Chapter Four

"I'm telling you Mom, we dropped an entire vat of caramel on the floor! It could take hours to clean up!" Cassie exclaimed into her phone.

"Honey, it's after midnight. They don't pay you enough for this."

"They're paying me extra, and it's not a school night. Also, Jay's here-- we'll go home together when we're done."

That seemed to pacify Annette; for a moment, Cassie dwelled on how strange it was that Jay was now considered her protection. When they were little it had always been the other way around. "Alright, but if that manager pulls this again-
-"

"He won't, Mom. See you tomorrow!" She hung up and put her phone back in her pocket. Ironically, that was one of the least stressful conversations she'd had with Annette lately, and she was lying through her teeth.

Dwight, Khalil, Sam and Jay were all sitting around the table in the break room, a plate of cookies and snacks in the center. Normally, someone would brew a pot of coffee for a meeting like this, but except for Sam, they had all been drinking coffee all night anyway. Instead, the rest of them had herbal tea, just for the sake of having something.

Sam gestured to her. "Can I borrow your phone?"

"Sure. You, uh, know how to use it?" she asked. People at the shop made fun of Sam for being virtually the only person in the modern world not to have his own cell phone.

He narrowed his eyes. "I think I can figure it out," he said, taking it from her. He fiddled with
it, apparently sending a short text, then gave it back to her. Cassie put it in her pocket immediately; she was tempted to see what he'd texted, but she could do that later.

"So time to spill, Harry Potter," said Khalil, leaning back in his chair.

Sam winced. "I'm not even going to get started on how insulting that is. Anyway, I never wanted any of you involved with this, but now that there's no choice--"

"You're a demon," said Jay, looking pleased with
himself.

Sam glared
at Jay, who smiled broadly. "That's what the vampire guys called you. They also called Cassie a familiar, but I thought that was supposed to be a cat."

"See, I heard him say that," said Khalil, "But I didn't think he meant it literally. Like, you know, you might say "Oh that manager is such a demon, he gave me six opening shifts this week," to which Dwight rolled his eyes.

"They were being literal," said Sam, reaching for a cookie. "Although technically, I'm only a half-demon. You almost never see full-blooded demons outside of the Realm; they just come here when summoned. Most of the time, when people say "demon", they mean a half, like me-- they try not to talk about full-blooded demons at all."

"Speak of the devil and all that," said Khalil quietly.

"Exactly. And try not to curse from now on, by the way, that gets their attention too."

There was a brief pause as everyone considered life from now on without the comfort of certain four-letter words. Dwight was the first to emerge from this revelry.

"So if you're a demon who can freeze time and scare away vampires, what are you doing in my store washing my dishes?" Dwight asked.

Sam chewed his cookie.
"Personal reasons. Not worth going into."

Khalil stood up. "Hey, you said you were
gonna level with us."

Sam swallowed. "I agree you all have a right to know what I am, not who I am."

"Sam..."Khalil growled.

"Let it go," said Dwight. "He's right; we don't need to know everything.
Just how this affects the rest of us." Sam nodded.

Khalil sat down, still looking livid. It was unlike him to be this emotional, and Cassie wasn’t sure what to make of it. She cleared her throat.

"What about me? You said that I had the most magic out of anyone here. What did that mean? And the stuff you said after in the...make-believe place." Dwight and Khalil both gave her confused looks.

"This is the coolest
freakin' thing that has ever happened," said Jay with reverence.

"Shut up, Jay," said Cassie. She supposed, from his perspective, it was sort of cool to find out that things like magic and demons existed, but he hadn't just nearly been bitten by a vampire. "Cool" was not the number-one adjective on her list right now.

"Humans and demons are alike in that they both generate magic, it's just that humans can't really use it," said Sam. "You're like...batteries, just sitting in a pack on the shelf not powering anything. Since I can use magic in general, I can use your magic, even though you can't."

Jay leaned forward, exci
ted. "You can take the triple-A batteries out and put them in a flashlight."

"I think we all understood the beauty of the metaphor well enough the first time, Jay," said Khalil, not looking at him.

"Yes, well," Sam continued. "Humans have different amounts of magic; most have very little, but some have a lot. Demons tend to fight over the ones that generate a lot of power."

Cassie gulped; suddenly, she had a much clearer picture of her current situation. "So, I'm one of the humans that produce lots of magic."

Sam took a gulp of his coffee and looked at her. It gave her a strange feeling, like he was really looking at her for the first time. "Cassie, when I try to get the magic out of humans it's like...it's like trying to drink out of a clogged water fountain. Just a little trickle bubbles to the surface. With you, I was prepared for that, only to get hit in the face with the force of a fire hose," he said.

Cassie put her hands around her tea to warm herself; she wasn't thirsty at all, but suddenly she felt cold. "So could you tell that from the moment you met me?"

"No," he said, frowning. "I had no idea. I just choose you first because virgin girls usually have the most magic, comparatively speaking."

Cassie's eyes widened. "H-hey!” she sputtered. What did that have to do with anything?

Sam shrugged. "There are a lot of theories as to why that is, but it’s not my area of expertise.”

“But how did you know I was-
-“

Sam coughed. “Let’s gloss over that, shall we?” he sai
d, taking another sip of his drink.

Cassie looked around at Dwight and Khalil to see them both pointedly avoid her eyes; Khalil seemed to be barely holding back laughter, his temporary mirth fighting with his anger. Jay just looked wide-eyed, confused, and absolutely thrilled. Annoyed, she crossed her arms and sat back in her chair with a harrumph.

“How did those…I can’t believe I’m saying this…vampires know to come after her?” asked Dwight. “I guess they knew the time-skip happened here, but I don’t follow after that.”

“Magic on that scale doesn’t happen very often. Um, at the risk of sounding arrogant, most demons couldn’t freeze time in a ten-mile radius,” s
aid Sam, looking down at his mug. Cassie found it interesting that talking about his demonic powers was the only thing that seemed to make him genuinely uncomfortable. “Either multiple demons were involved-- which they knew wasn’t likely since I’m the only one in this general area-- or there was a powerful human involved. It wasn’t a huge deductive leap.

“So they sent vampires to go hunting for the human with an abundance of magic,” he said, and Cassie noted that he talked about vampires in the same tone that racist people reserved for ethnic slurs. “I know you probabl
y think of vampires as cool, but they’re usually as subservient to demons as humans are to vampires-- more, even. And they’re so primitive they can only feed on magic through blood…it’s disgusting.”

“And you came back to save me from them in just the nick of time,” Cassie said, not even sure if she should sound sarcastic or not. Sam winced briefly.

“Not really; I didn’t just happen to get here before they took you. I came because I sensed your fear.” He looked at the surface of his coffee studiously, like the answers to life’s most mysterious questions could be found at the bottom of his cup.

Taking a page from Khalil’s book, Cassie stood up. Maybe it was stupid, but she felt better looking down at him right then
. “You…did…what?” she said.

Sam main
tained his death grip on his ceramic mug. “We have a bond now, alright? I didn’t mean for it to happen, but when you do a power transfer on that scale, it’s unavoidable. Technically now you’re my…familiar.”

Cassie pursed her lips and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “What is that,” she said, asking the question with no question mark. She didn’t know what her face looked like, but it must have been scary, because Jay started scooting his chair away from her before he even realized he was doing it.

“Someone a demon shares magic with…a, uh, servant I guess,” he said, very deliberately not meeting her eyes. He jumped almost imperceptibly when she slammed her palms on the table.

“So, let me get this straight. You used my magic, because you ran out, and in the process, you made me your servant, and now you can “sense my fear” and stuff. Can you “sense” how I feel right now?”

“Don’t worry, I can’t read your mind, it doesn’t work that way. It’s just that if you’re threatened, like you were before, I sense it and I can come help you. That’s really all being a familiar means,” Sam said in a poor attempt at nonchalance.

“If that’s all being a familiar meant, a bunch of vampires wouldn’t have tried to kidnap her right out of our store,” said Khalil, giving Sam a look like he didn’t trust him as far as he could th
row him. “What else does it involve that you don’t want us to know?”

Sam rubbed his eyes, something Cassie was beginning to realize he did often when he was stressed. “Look, I’ve been running from this culture for pretty much my entire life,
and I try not to think about it. I really wasn’t prepared to give you all Demonology 101.”

“And maybe I’d be a lot more sympathetic to that if you hadn’t gone MIA-
- for days-- when we really needed you,” said Khalil. He stood up, but not to glower over Sam; instead, he started pacing the length of the room.

“Do you know what that was like? Waiting for days after you left, thinking you were never going to come back and we were never going to get an explanation for anything? That I would never know what the hell I had even been working next to for months?”

Cassie now understood why Khalil was so pissed. She worked with Sam once or twice a week, tops; Sam opened the shop with Khalil practically every morning. She didn’t know if the two were exactly friends, but they were close, in a way. Cassie hadn’t felt betrayed when Sam ran off because she’d had no expectations for him, but Khalil did.

Sam sighed, and sat back in his chair. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Fu-stuff it,” Khalil said, still pacing. It was obvious he had meant to curse, but changed tack at the last moment.

“I just had no idea what to do…at any job, once someone starts getting suspicious, I usually take off,” Sam said. “I felt like I couldn’t face any of you, but I knew I shouldn’t leave town because someone might come after Cassie. So I waited-
- afraid to come back, and afraid to leave,” he finished bitterly.

Cassie sat down again, not sure what to make of him. He did seem genuinely regretful that things had turned out this way, but she wasn’t about to let that “servant” thi
ng go so easily.

Dwight looked thoughtful for a moment,
then looked at Sam. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you hadn’t been here, wouldn’t everyone here except Jay have probably died when the building next door collapsed? Doesn’t sound to me like you have much to be guilty about.”

“He abandoned us, Dwight!” said Khalil, spinning to face the smaller man. “You heard what the vampires
said, she was fair game because he was gone! How can you forgive him for that?”

“But the thing is
, he did come back. And I’ll have a bruise on my head for a while where that…thing hit me, but beyond that, we’re all fine.”

Khalil glared at him. “So, you’re just going to let him get away with everything because he saved us once? Excuse me,” he said, turning in Sam’s direction throwing his hands up theatrically. “Thank you, oh great one, for sparing our miserable lives! How dare we puny humans question our demon
overlord!”

Sam’s face went redder than Cassie had ever seen it. “Khalil, shut up!” he yelled.

“Or what? You’ll make me go poof?”

“You’re already a poof,” said a voice from behind them.

Cassie turned in her chair and saw Serenus standing at the door to the break room, both hands resting on the head of his cane. “Sorry for busting in on you like this, but the door was unlocked-- well, technically, the lock was broken.”

“Dr.
Zeitbloom?” said Dwight, looking confused with his red-blond bangs in his face.

“You got here awfully fast,” Sam said, the anger draining from his face.

“You? Explaining the how and why of demons to your friends? Like I would miss that?” he said, striding into the room. It couldn’t be that easy for a man with a cane to swagger, but he managed it.

“What’s the professor got to do with any of this?” asked Khalil, frowning. He looked a little calmer, but he still hadn’t taken his seat.

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